Page 108 of Moon Tamed

Some questions were easier to answer than others, and I bobbed my head.

Kirkland opened the door. “Let me reassure him you’re fine before you show up. Wagging your tail is a universal sign of happy wolf, so if you want to help with the reassurance, do that.”

As I was well aware wolves did not typically wag their tails to express happiness in the wild, I regarded him with my ears turned back.

“If I say happy wolf, the wolves don’t try to nip me for calling them dogs,” he replied.

That I could believe.

He led me down the hall to a pair of double doors, and he cracked one open to peek inside. “Calden? Apparently, Coraline is the worrying kind, and she has worried herself about your worries to the point she shifted. She’s fine, and I gave her a few minutes to get on her paws and sniff around, but if you could do your part in removing the overabundance of worrying happening in my household, I would be appreciative. She isn’t the same breed of wolf you are, so she must have some form of latent genetics we aren’t testing for, but she is a wolf. Her diet as an animal will consist mostly of fish, but I’m sure you can handle adding some fishing to your general hunting habits. You enjoy fishing when you aren’t hunting rabbit.”

There was a moment of silence, and then I heard a low chuckle. “Well, that’s a bet I just lost. Dad told me she’d need the full week to get through it, and I told him three days, and she’d put up a fight.”

Kirkland sighed. “You’re not going to have an anxious meltdown?”

“Does she have four paws, a tail, a nose, and a full coat of fur?”

“She has all of the appropriate wolf parts and seems to be in good health.”

“Then I have nothing to worry about.”

“You, boy, are supposed to be having an anxiety attack at this point. I scheduled in time to handle an anxiety attack. This is not you having an anxiety attack.”

“While I appreciate the concern, why would I have an anxiety attack over this? She’s been tested, she doesn’t have the faulty gene, and we haven’t had anyone without the faulty gene fail to shift. The only thing I’m worried about is figuring out how she specifically ticks so she can get back to her human form after she’s had some time getting used to being a wolf. Where is she?”

“Out in the hall with me. Since you aren’t going to be indulging in anxiety, you can worry about making sure she doesn’t indulge in anxiety, which is why she popped over to wolf form. Apparently, the thought of stressing you was sufficient to stress her straight into her first shift.”

“Well, she’s a worrier, and when she isn’t worrying about disappointing someone, she’s worrying about making sure she does her job perfectly. And if she isn’t worried about that, she’s worried about her flock of endangered birds ruling her office.”

“I can change my schedule to treat her for anxiety if you think it’s required.”

Kirkland got out of the way, and Calden stepped into the hallway, looking me over with narrowed eyes. “Does anything hurt?”

I shook my head.

“Good. Where are your clothes?”

“She shifted with them.”

Calden nodded, and his expression relaxed. “And she was worried?”

“She’ll be fine. She just cares, and when people care, they tend to become worriers. You’ll want to keep an eye on her, and I’ll need to get some fish brought in. I’m sure she’ll eat some rabbit, but her breed prefers fish. I suspect she had wolf DNA present somewhere in her genetic code and we aren’t looking in the right place for it. But we have her DNA sample from before her shift, so we can start looking for the matching genetics. We should have the genetic code for her breed. I’ll need to confirm it against a current blood sample, but that’s trivial.”

“Anything I should know?”

“Not particularly. She shifted swiftly, in good form, and without any evidence of distress. I doubt the process hurt her at all. I’ll want to evaluate her genetics to find out why, because if there’s gene therapy we can do to prevent the nervous system from firing during the shift and only during the shift, that would be highly useful for the Hunters. I’ll have a questionnaire for both of you to help figure out what behaviors helped move her progression along well ahead of schedule.”

“What do you mean by behaviors?”

“Exchange of bodily fluids in any fashion,” Kirkland announced.

Oh dear. I stared at the man, and then I stared at Calden. Calden’s eyes widened. “She doesn’t kiss on the first date, and we’re not technically dating.”

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“We’re very good at planning dates where we read books and sit at the fire but we end up just reading books and sitting at the fire,” Calden confessed. “She’s methodical, and I’m not going to ruin her fun. If she wants a long, drawn-out hunt, then I’ll give that to her. And it doesn’t hurt I enjoy reading books and sitting at the fire.”

“That’s data. It’s not the expected data, but it’s data. I suppose I will have to adjust my questions to be more emotionally oriented than physically oriented. Have you been in close physical proximity?”

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